This book has tons of info about the best plants to feature in your garden for which season, but you know what it also has? Recipes. I was not expecting recipes, but I do love some recipes squirreled in with my gardening tips and plant lists. Give me daffodils and a dandelion salad recipe one after the other and I’m one happy nerd. Suggestions for summer plants followed by summer veggie recipes? Yes, please. Can I live at this Brandywine Cottage? It looks awesome. I don’t know if I want to move to Pennsylvania, though…

Heaven. I absolutely adored this beautiful garden book that takes us month by month through Culp's exquisite gardens. I love it as a gardener, I love it as an environmentalist, I love it as someone who just wants to look at beauty and blooms in January in Minnesota. It's just phenomenal in every way.

Culp gives us photo after photo of his gardens and then tells us about his favorite plants and how to care for them, with stories and tips and a warm, conversational tone. Each month also offers recipes related to the garden one way or another. Most use plants from the garden but a few are just well-loved family recipes (generally from his husband's mother) that fuel his leaf raking or the garden work that month. Think gooseberry fool, dandelion salad with hot bacon dressing (and a vegetarian version) and watercress tea sandwiches. All are simple but decadent.

It's the plants that star in this book though, and I am now destined to go broke seeking some of these out. They are beautiful and whimsical and his love of them (and use of them) will make most gardeners want all of them for their own gardens.

I also appreciate that Culp gardens organically and doesn't try to sacrifice the rest of nature for his garden. He talks openly about his battles with deer and groundhogs (he says he live traps the groundhogs but once had a season where he bribed one with peanut butter sandwiches to leave some loved garden plants alone), and his hope that his neighbor's chemicals don't kill off the rest of fireflies that decorate the land at night. He gives advice for providing not just food for the birds but habitats and water. He talks about climate change and its effect on the seasons, and about how we as gardeners can be stewards of the earth.

This is just a beautiful book, the kind I'd flip through all year round and leave out to ogle. Highly recommended.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

This was so charming and Culp did a great job of recreating cottage life, recipes, ambiance, even simple bouquets. The organization by month and then by season (there are six apparently in the gardening world) was surprisingly clear without being rigorously structured. Lovely read!